Prior art ice cream machines for household use are well known, such as manufactured by Salton and others. However, these prior art machines known to applicant are not satisfactory in that they are not self-contained and require the use of some type of separate or external refrigeration such as dry ice or actual placement in the freezer compartment of a refrigerator until the final product becomes frozen. In addition such prior art ice cream machines do not provide a substantially uniform temperature gradient throughout the ice cream mixture during mixing with the outermost portions of the mixture, which are normally closest to the refrigerated container walls, being colder than the center of the mixture, often by as much as 20 degrees centigrade. This produces an unsatisfactory ice cream product. Moreover, because of this, ice tends to form on the walls of the container which must be scraped off by hard non-flexible blades driven by a high horsepower motor, which high horsepower would not otherwise be required.
Apart from the above, applicant is not aware of any such prior art machines capable of both making ice cream and heating liquid foods, such as puddings, or of also blending vegetables in a single efficient machine.
These disadvantages of the prior art are overcome by the present invention.